Academic Personal Tutoring Experiences

Academic Personal Tutoring Experiences of Joint Honours, Foundation Year and External Students

Sahar Ali, supervised by Rachael O'Connor

About the student researcher

I'm Sahar, a medical student starting my third year on the MBChB course after intercalating in Psychology. I am excited to be part of improving the student experience at Leeds, specifically by exploring the Academic Personal Tutoring (APT) experiences of Joint Honours, Foundation Year and External Students. Having been a part of co-designing the reverse mentoring scheme in the past and exploring the APT experiences of students from minority backgrounds, I am intrigued to see how we can further our understanding of APT in these specific student groups and enhance their student experience. As someone from a minority background myself, I heavily appreciate the need for APT to be tailored towards specific student needs to ensure every student feels supported and included - an important part of feeling a sense of belonging at University.

Project overview

This study aims to explore the Academic Personal Tutoring (APT) experiences of Joint Honours, Foundation Year and External Students, with the long term goal for the findings to inform APT practices at the University. In this study, I will be conducting online reflective group sessions, similar to focus groups, with small groups of students of each category. In this session, there will be group discussions facilitated by myself, the researcher, and there will also be a 1-1 interview between two students for them to discuss their personal APT experiences (facilitated by previously set questions). The transcripts for all these sessions will be analysed to understand the challenges these student groups face with APT, how these challenges are specific to their identity as a Joint Honours/Foundation Year/External student, and how these challenges can be overcome to improve the APT experience of these student groups. The reported findings can then be used to inform APT practice and development of the APT system at the University of Leeds.

If you are interested in finding out about the project findings, please contact the project supervisor.